Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said aerial surveillance of a debris field of wood and life jackets had spotted 13 bodies and a full-scale hunt was under way for survivors involving 15 ships and 10 aircraft.

“This is a search and rescue, trying to find people alive,” Clare told reporters, describing the incident as “another terrible tragedy, another terrible reminder how dangerous these journeys are”.

When the drifting boat was first spotted by a border protection aircraft on Wednesday, Clare said officials “identified approximately 55 people on the deck of the vessel, mostly adult men but also a small number of women and children”.

The navy vessel HMAS Warramunga was sent to intercept the boat on Thursday but it had disappeared, and aerial searches turned up no sign until Friday, when Clare said a “submerged hull” was seen from the air.

The Warramunga arrived on site to find wood and life jackets floating, with the first body sighted late on Friday and another 12 found by Sunday morning.

Rear Admiral David Johnston, head of border protection, said the “complex and time-consuming” task of recovering bodies would not begin until the search for survivors was exhausted.

“We believe from (medical) advice that we are still in the window where survivability is possible,” Johnston said.

Johnston said sea conditions had been favourable and when the vessel was initially sighted on Wednesday “nothing about (the passengers´) demeanour suggested that this boat was in distress”.

He added that Indonesia´s maritime authority Basarnas was “certainly aware of the incident” but was caught up with a number of other vessels closer to the Indonesian coastline.

HMAS Warramunga had also been diverted to assist another suspected people-smuggling boat off Christmas Island, which issued a distress call to Australian police overnight, Clare said.

Hundreds of refugees have died in asylum-seeker boat accidents on the perilous sea journey from Indonesia to Australia in recent years, the latest in March when a boat carrying 95 capsized, killing two people including a small child.

Another vessel disappeared without a trace in the Sunda Strait in April with 72 on board and there were fears of a further sinking in May when 28 life jackets washed up on the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean.

Australia is struggling with a record influx of asylum-seekers arriving by boat from Indonesia and Sri Lanka, with numbers expected to top 25,000 in the 12 months to June 30 despite punitive policies banishing refugees to the remote Pacific.

It is a sensitive political issue expected to dominate the campaign ahead of September´s national elections, with the conservative opposition promising tough new measures including towing people-smuggling boats out of Australian waters.

Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Indonesia would never agree to the opposition´s towback plan, describing it as a “fantasy”.

CANBERRA, Australia: Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard caved in to building pressure and called a leadership ballot of parliamentarians in her Labor party for later Thursday.

“I have determined that there will be a ballot for the leadership at 4.30pm (0530 GMT) today. In the meantime, take your best shot,” she said in parliament, adding that the vote would also be for the deputy leadership.

Her decision followed senior cabinet minister Simon Crean openly calling for a ballot, with leadership speculation rampant as Gillard lags badly in opinion polls just six months out from national elections.

Crean said the speculation was “killing” the party as former leader Kevin Rudd waits in the wings and his backers campaign behind the scenes.

“He has got no option but to run,” Crean said of Rudd. “We have to get on with the message and it has to become an inclusive party.”

Rudd was brutally ousted by Gillard in mid 2010 and lost a 2012 leadership challenge 71-31.

CANBERRA, Australia: Prime Minister Julia Gillard surprised Australians on Wednesday by announcing that elections will be held Sept. 14, in a country where governments have traditionally given the opposition little more than a month’s notice to keep a strategic advantage.
In a speech to the National Press Gallery, Gillard said she wanted to create an environment in which voters could more easily focus on national issues by removing uncertainty around the timing of the elections.
“I reflected on this over the summer and I thought it’s not right for Australians to be forced into a guessing game, and it’s not right for Australians to not face this year with certainty and stability,” she said, referring to her holiday break during the current Southern Hemisphere summer.
Experts disagreed about whether Gillard’s unconventional move would give her an advantage in the elections. Some said voters would embrace her for making the early announcement on the date, while others suggested that Gillard had above all created a grueling eight-month election campaign instead of the usual five-week campaign.
Opinion polls suggest the conservative opposition coalition led by Tony Abbott is likely to win the elections convincingly.
Abbott welcomed the announcement on the date. He said the elections would “be about trust,” echoing his Liberal Party’s campaign theme during its last successful election campaign in 2004.
“The choice before the Australian people could not be clearer,” he told reporters. “It’s more tax or less, it’s more regulation or less, it’s less competence or more, it’s less freedom or more.”
Abbott has promised to remove the carbon tax that Australia’s biggest polluters pay, as well as the tax paid by coal and iron ore miners. Both taxes were introduced in July.
Gillard’s center-left Labor Party narrowly scraped through the last elections on Aug. 21, 2010, to form a minority government with the support of independent legislators and a lawmaker from the minor Greens party.
She said she consulted with Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan and senior colleagues to help her make the decision on the date. Two independent lawmakers who support Gillard’s government, Rob Oakeshott and Tony Windsor, said they were informed of the date Tuesday night.
Gillard said that given the certainty of the poll date, the opposition would have no excuse to delay the release of the details and costs of their campaign platform.
The Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the country’s main national business group, backed Gillard’s call for early policy announcements, after previously complaining that the uncertainty of the poll date in an election year harms business.
Australian National University political scientist John Warhurst said breaking with convention made Gillard appear in control and transparent, which would likely prove popular with voters who have tired of the guessing that surrounds the poll date in every election year.
“Whether she comes to regret giving away the advantage of surprise, only time will tell how big an advantage that was,” Warhurst said.
Warhurst and former Labor Party power broker Graham Richardson both said the announcement would make it harder for former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to attempt to replace Gillard in an internal party coup early in the election season.
Rudd, who was ousted by Gillard in such a coup in 2010, failed to gain enough support among Labor lawmakers to topple her last February.
Richardson said the announcement would also make it difficult for Abbott to put off announcing his campaign platform and explaining how it will be paid for.
Senior opposition lawmaker Joe Hockey accused Gillard of political trickery and said it would backfire on her.
“She’s defined the next eight months as the longest election campaign in Australian history,” Hockey told Sky News.
While the early announcement was a surprise, the date was not. Gillard had to set a date between August and the end of the year. Sept. 14 had been touted by commentators as a likely date.
Oakeshott and Windsor said Gillard had agreed in 2010 to hold the next election in September or October.

BRISBANE: Thousands of Australians huddled in shelters Tuesday as torrential rains flooded cities and towns in the northeast, killing four people and prompting around 1,000 helicopter evacuations.

With floodwaters expected to peak in most of the worst-hit areas later Tuesday, officials were rushing to move those in the highest-risk areas to safety.

In the hard-hit city of Bundaberg, 385 kilometers (240 miles) north of Brisbane, rescue crews plucked 1,000 people to safety after the river that runs through town broke its banks, sending fast-moving, muddy water pouring into streets and homes. Around 1,500 residents fled to evacuation centers, while patients at the local hospital were being airlifted to Brisbane as a precaution.

“Listen to the roar of the water — that’s not helicopters,”Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said. “You see a lot of locations where there are literally sort of rapids. There’s white water out there, so it is very dangerous.”

Queensland residents and officials were being particularly cautious, after floodwaters from heavy rain in late 2010 and early 2011 left much of the state under water in the worst flooding Australia had seen in decades. The 2010-2011 floods killed 35 people, damaged or destroyed 30,000 homes and businesses and left Brisbane, Australia’s third-largest city, under water for days.

The current flood crisis was not as severe, though some areas in northern New South Wales were hit by more than half a meter (about 20 inches) of rain, State Emergency Services Deputy Commissioner Steve Pearce said. Four people have died, including a 3-year-old boy who was hit by a falling tree in Brisbane.

“We’re expecting flash flooding, we’re expecting trees to be brought down, wires to be brought down by these winds,” Pearce said. “We’re expecting a very challenging 24 hours in front of us.”

In the New South Wales city of Grafton, 600 kilometers (370 miles) north of Sydney, 2,500 people were ordered to leave their homes as the Clarence River continued to rise.

“We are in a dangerous situation that requires a timely response and I think the best thing to do is to evacuate,” said Richie Williamson, the mayor of Clarence Valley Council.

The flooding was caused by the remnants of a tropical cyclone that also caused severe weather including tornadoes and created sea foam that came ashore on the Queensland coast. The foam covered roads in places, causing traffic to be diverted. Elsewhere, beach-goers waded into the bubbles to pose for photographs.